Technology advancements made many aspects of our lives easier. However, they also opened new avenues for slacking, especially at work.

According to human resources consultant Corinne Jones, a company installed an employee monitoring software only to find out the employees spent 80 hours per month watching cat videos. At Workpuls, we witnessed many similar situations.

Staggering stats are popping out online, and you might be surprised to hear that an average employee spends 1.5 to 3 hours at work doing private activities!

Employees are your biggest asset and your biggest expense, which is why you need to manage them carefully.

Last year, Workpuls’ team installed their employee monitoring software in a large marketing agency. According to them, the agency ran Workpuls for a few months and then canceled their subscription. Upon talking to the HR Manager in charge, they realized the agency was very satisfied with the product. The software helped them identify employees who were spending time on gambling websites and fired them. With those workers gone, the agency thought they did not need the software anymore.

One might consider this way of thinking short-term when it comes to the employee tracking system. When put in a long-term perspective, using computer monitoring software even after removing the cause of the problem has proven to be beneficial. Since the monitoring tool helps managers analyze user behavior under different circumstances, those managers can use the data to improve.

Over the years, Workpuls was able to distinguish two types of customers. The first group is small to medium businesses, which are focused on boosting productivity and employee engagement. On the other hand, larger companies and enterprises are more worried about insider data theft than productivity. Given that 60% of all insider data breaches are carried out by insiders (IBM), these facts are not so surprising.

According to Workpuls’ data, companies which implemented employee monitoring software saw on average a ten percent rise in active daily work time. Additionally, clock-in accuracy grew by 15 percent, while repetitive business processes were 24 percent more efficient. On average, their thy spent 25 percent less time completing projects and were able to save up to ten million dollars annually.

Furthermore, productivity in remote companies grew by 26 percent, while the software helped managers calculate payrolls more accurately by 23 percent. Time reporting was 60 percent more accurate because the software works automatically.

Those who were tracking employees in-office reported a 32 percent increased productivity and 21 percent increased active daily work time.

These numbers do sound impressive! If you opt-in to start using an employee monitoring software, you can surely expect great results. However, it does not mean you should spy on every move your employees make. It is rather a way to increase productivity, and ultimately profitability.

Sidney Marin Is a researcher and law student at York University (TORONTO). He has worked as the Director of the Graduate Lawyering Program. He worked for American law firms in Moscow, Russia for three years. Hegraduated from Columbia Law School, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs and Harvard College. He research interest is in human rights and health law, with a particular focus on the law and policy of vaccination.

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